Doctor Who_ Storm Harvest - Mike Tucker [2]
3
and she hadn’t been impressed. He had been all over her like a rash, telling her what an asset she was to the company and promising bonuses. Then his fussy little assistant, Blint, had whisked him away, informing him that there were far more important people waiting and he hadn’t spared her another glance.
Garpol always threw a party on his new colony worlds, partly to let the colonists know how much they owed OMC, partly to gloat at the competition. Holly had watched his expensive personal shuttle glide down to the colony pad and a skimmer whisk him to the reception. She had been in a bad mood from the start of the evening. She was fed up with spending more and more time behind a desk and less and less time out at sea, and she had spent all night fighting off the advances of faceless, suited creeps and drinking far too much expensive champagne. When Garpol had spotted her through the crowds and started fawning over her she was less than polite. When his hand had strayed to her backside her tension had exploded in a punch that sent him sprawling into a table of hors d’oeuvres.
As officials ran around in blind panic Holly had smoothed her dress down, crossed the room to the head of InterOceanic, and asked for a job. She’d been hired on the spot.
Another buzz from the communicator woke her from her reminiscing.
‘ OK, Bruiser, we’re ready for the next cable length. ’
Holly crossed to the cabin window, stuck two fingers in her mouth and whistled hard.
Jim looked up from the deck, sweat dripping off him. Holly grinned at him.
‘You’re soaking!’
He shrugged. ‘Well perhaps if the skipper would lend a hand instead of gazing at the rings like a first timer...’
‘OK, OK! I’ll be there. Send Trevor up to take over in here. The guys are ready for the next cable length.’
Jim gave her a thumbs up and began shouting orders to the men on the deck. Holly crossed back to the communicator.
‘It’s on its way, Auger.’
‘ Cheers, boss. ’
‘Oh, and Auger...’
‘ Yeah? ’
‘Call me Bruiser one more time and I’ll put a knot in your airline.
Hyperion out.’
Fourteen fathoms below the Hyperion Dawn, the thick rubber-coated 4
cable snaked down on to the seabed, guided into its moorings by two suited divers who crawled over the sandy sea floor like huge metallic crabs. Auger and Geeson were experienced company divers; they’d been part of Holly’s team on Hobson’s World and Kandalinga. They had transferred to InterOceanic the day after she had, and had been top of her list for the Coralee crew.
As the cable slipped into its final mooring Auger thumbed the stop stud on the arm of his suit. The cable glided to a halt and the two divers lumbered forward to lock the couplings in place.
Tony Auger was in a bad mood. He’d been on shift for five hours now and he was tired and hungry. As he grappled with locking the coupling the spanner slipped from his grip and tumbled on to the silty floor.
‘Goddamn it!’
His partner, Geeson, looked up. ‘What the hell is it now?’
‘These frigging suits!’ Auger held up a gauntleted hand. ‘You tell me that a diver designed these!’
Geeson grunted. This was an old argument. Deep-diving suits for frontier worlds were rugged, tough and functional; they hadn’t been designed with fine work in mind. He sighed. Working under water had all the problems of working in space and none of the advantages; it was just as claustrophobic with little of the manoeuvrability. Even so, he wasn’t about to give in to another bout of Auger’s griping.
‘You whinge too much. Just get on with it.’
He watched as Auger pulled the spanner out of the mud, batting aside the fish that had drifted over to investigate. There were always fish at engineering sites, darting in to catch anything stirred up by the machines. A great shoal of them hovered nearby, their multicoloured fins glinting in the weak sunlight that filtered down from the surface.
Geeson was always surprised at their variety. He was a veteran